ENERGY CRISIS COULD BREAK SA
Society is already so fragile that democracy and peace are hanging by a thread. Eskom’s failures could snap it
Eskom’s inability to provide energy security to homes, businesses, institutions and transport infrastructure is deepening the fractures in our societal and political lives.
The Afrikaans word gatvol does not even begin to describe the boiling tempers and vitriol being spewed at this point, directed mainly at the governing party.
Energy security is vital for every country, and any absence is rightly seen as a major threat to sustainability.
In South Africa we let this energy insecurity linger at our peril, given how it heightens the fragility of our people, families, businesses and organisations. At its zenith, it can even pose a threat to democracy and peace, which are already hanging by a thread.
In a speech I gave to Nestlé’s East and Southern African management on January 26, I focused on this fragility, its drivers and the risks it poses. And I suggested some leadership strategies to help people cope with it.
First, I argued that ours is not the first generation to experience a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world all generations have dealt with that in some way or another, but we’re still here because people found a way to prevail.
Yet it’s also true that we’re in a heightened environment of volatility, dealing with the disruptive impact of multiple crises: the fourth industrial revolution, climate change, the fallout from Covid and the social fracturing that underscores our need for social justice. In South Africa and a few other countries, the challenges are probably even more intense, since water, energy and food security issues form part of the polycrisis mix.
To the extent that many of these problems are not likely to be resolved soon, as data scientists predict more epidemics and economic black swans, some see ours as an epoch of permacrisis.
What does that do to our personal lives, organisations, businesses and democracy? Because the fragility we face extends to various spheres of our lives.
Well, the data suggests that in the absence of mitigation strategies, this sort of extreme volatility exacerbates our human, organisational and democratic fragilities. It hampers our ability to withstand any other headwinds that come our way.
This means, I told the Nestlé executives, that we should not be authors of our misfortunes by making these crises any worse, and we need to invest in the personal and organisational anchors that reduce this fragility.
How does this fragility manifest?
In our personal lives, the signs include fraying mental health, poor productivity and fractured relations. When it comes to organisations, this extends to an inability to withstand headwinds from the operational ecosystem.
At the Thuma Foundation, which I head, we saw plenty of resilience among people during Covid. But we soon realised this was only because the individuals concerned had built an “anti-fragility” mindset before the pandemic arrived.
In other words, people and organisations need to be anchored first, to reduce their vulnerability to situations which would otherwise see them crack.
This epiphany around “anti-fragility” was influenced by the data gathered by the chair in social justice at Stellenbosch University on the impact of the Covid regulations. Those who had already fallen, and hadn’t recovered, really struggled to bounce back when a new crisis emerged.
Today it’s clear that the fragility to people, the economy and the country caused by the energy insecurity we’re dealing with can’t be sustained.
It has to be dealt with, or we risk degenerating into anarchy and extremism and there are already signs of this, as demagogues grab the moment to push their own populist agendas.
There are a number of options we ought to consider to end this crisis quickly. One is for Eskom to take on the role of bulk-buying solar panels and selling them to families and businesses. This could make solar panels more affordable, help manage the country’s energy risk, and reduce fragility in the wider ecosystem.
As for the declaration of a state of disaster, if this helps the country access the relevant funds and bypass bureaucratic hurdles, particularly when it comes to procurement, all the better.
University and founder of the Thuma